Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Now you can consult VMM errors and review the recommended actions for them. Technet published SCVMM 2008 Errors table to help you with the task of performing the recommended action for a given error code.

One of these days I was testing one of my Hyper-Vs and because of a mistake of mine I removed all the VM associations to Hyper-V mmc console and SCVMM…

Now what!!!! I knew that the supported way to add those machines back to the Hyper-V and SCVMM was through backup/Restore or I could import them using an “previous” export, but those machines were new VMs created only for the test propose, I had no backup or export of them.

How to import them back? Ok, no panic, first thing to check is the files, are the VM files still in place? Yes!!! Ok, that means not all is lost…

1 Option:Easy enough, you create a new VM choose the option “attach a virtual hard disk latter” or “Use an existing virtual hard disk” and then map the VM to the disk used before by the other “missing” VM, of course, you can copy the disk to the new VM folder to keep all files together.

Nah….. I need the VM configuration, those configurations were critical to my tests and I don’t have the configuration paper with me. Let's try Option 2

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2 Option:

First go to the “missing VM folder\virtual Machines\” and take note of the file {GUID}.xml (In this scenario is the 71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0.xml).

Now open the Hyper-V mmc and create a new VM with the same name, and point the new VM to the same drive/folder where the “missing VM” is at.

Choose the option “attach a virtual hard disk latter” and do a next, next, thing until you finish the VM creation process.

Now go to the VM folder and under “Virtual Machines” folder you have 2 GUIds.xml, the original 71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0.xml (that you take note in the first step) and the new (in this scenario) E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24.xml that refers to the new VM (Note: The GUIDs that you have, will differ from these).

The next step is to copy everything that is inside of the old 71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0.xml to the new E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24.xml, yes, everything… Basically you’re replacing the contents of the new {GUID}.xml with data from the old one. Save the file with the same name in the same place replacing the existing one.

Next step, open the E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24.xml, and the replace everything that has the 71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0 with E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24. Save the file replacing the existing one.

Next step, copy the files that are inside the “F:\VM01\Virtual Machines\71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0” to “F:\VM01\Virtual Machines\E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24”, you must also rename the files (.bin and .vsv) that are inside that folder to match the new GUID.

If you have snapshots, then you also need to rename some files and folders inside Snapshots folder. Open “VM01\Snapshots” folder. Rename the folder “VM01\Snapshots \71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0” to “VM01\Snapshots\E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24”. Then open the “VM01\Snapshots\{GUIDofTheSnapshot}” and rename the files inside that folder (.bin and .vsv) to match the GUID of the new VM (If you have multiple snapshots, you have to repeat the same process to each one).

Now, open “VM01\Snapshots\{GUIDofTheSnapshot}.xml” and replace the values with “71DB1869-534A-4B0B-B2B8-B89170FC0EF0” with the new VM GUID “E5D8FBFC-4E01-4D48-AE95-1CF1630E2C24”.(If you have multiple snapshots, you have to repeat the same process to each one).

Now is time to allow access to the Service SID access to all files in VM01, from cmdline type:

The last step is to manually create a symboliclink and grant the proper permissions to each individual snapshot that has a {GUID}.xml inside the VM01\snapshots folder (in this case there’re 2 snapshots).

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Microsoft has the Service pack 2 for Windows 2008 and Windows Vista available for download.

SP2 is an update to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista that incorporates improvements discovered through automated feedback, as well as updates that have been delivered since SP1. Service Pack 1 is a prerequisite for installing Service Pack 2. Please make sure that your system is running Service Pack 1 before you install Service Pack 2.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Need help to plan your Active Directory Forest Recovery?Have a look at this document that might help you in the process...

This guide contains best-practice recommendations for recovering an Active Directory forest, if forest-wide failure has rendered all domain controllers in the forest incapable of functioning normally. The procedure steps in this guide, which you must customize for your particular environment, describe how to recover the entire Active Directory forest to a point in time before the critical malfunction. They also ensure that none of the restored domain controllers replicates from a domain controller with potentially dangerous data. The procedures apply to Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server 2008 and the Active Directory® directory service in Windows Server 2003.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Automatic Updates (AU) are critical to companies and end users because they keep the systems up-to-date with the most recently security patches, hotfixes, drivers, etc...

Most of the time AU will work without issues but unfortunately this doesn’t apply to 100% of the scenarios. The good news is that you’ll find most of the manual fixes on the web with a little Google search, the bad news is that in some scenarios you may crash your system trying to fix that.

For full AU reset Microsoft has a tool "Microsoft Fix it" that may help you with this task minimizing the risk of mistakes, of course you always have the “old school” method if you want.

"In the English version of Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) 32-bit Ultimate, the folder that is created as the root folder of the system drive (%SystemDrive%) is missing entries in its security descriptor. One effect of this problem is that standard users such as non-administrators cannot perform all operations to subfolders that are created directly under the root. Therefore, applications that reference folders under the root may not install successfully or may not uninstall successfully. Additionally, operations or applications that reference these folders may fail.

For example, if a folder is created under the root of the system drive from an elevated command prompt, this folder will not correctly inherit permissions from the root of the drive. Therefore, some specific operations, such as deleting the folder, will fail when they are performed from a non-elevated command prompt. Additionally, the following error message appears when the operation fails:"Access is denied."

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Excited about the new Exchange 2010?Well you can get it from MS Web site and test the new beta for this product.Additionally you may have a look at this nice introduction video by Ilse van Crieking (MVP Exchange) will guide you through some of the new features of the next generation Exchange 2010 server, click here.

You may also want to download the RSAT for Windows 7 RC. RSAT give IT administrators the ability to manage roles and features that are installed on remote computers running Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008R2 from a remote computer that is running Windows 7 RC.